my silly words

common people (the song)

The same girl in the same calf leather ankle boots had stood on the front lawn of Saint Martin's College on Tuesday, and yesterday, and now today I stopped to look at her twice. Books on sculpture peeked coyly from her satchel; her hair was charmingly disheveled— indeed, her hands kept wandering up to pull loose another strand or two. Tortoiseshell glasses, turtleneck. She was talking to a friend, rather too animatedly, but what was that old adage about once being happenstance, twice coincidence— thrice, enemy action?

The college (gothic pillars, buttresses) loomed like a reproach as I set a single shabby-shod foot on the flawless lawn of this sanctuary of the educated, and the elated glance she slid my way was enough to confirm it. I knew this waltz.

"Hello."

"Hi," she replied, like she'd just noticed me, hitching her bag up on her shoulder. Her friend looked me up, down, sideways, flashed an expensive smile, and was off— but this girl twisted a strand of hair around her finger and stood quite still.

"Can I buy you a drink?" That was in the budget for today, I thought. She laughed.

"This is a progressive school. How about I buy you a drink, if you choose the place?" This was agreeable. Her name was Thea, spoken with the cadence of a minor Greek goddess, and halfway down the street she slipped her hand into mine.

The October wind bore down harshly in the narrow streets like the gusts in a subway tunnel. She held onto her filmy scarf with both hands, laughing, goggling at everything we passed; twice she nearly stepped straight into the leaf-clogged gutter. The Rathskeller hunkered squat against the cold at the end of the block. The name's nasty, but the place was nice: green paint, hand-lettered sign like the village pub in a medieval English village, and the best club sodas you'll find on this side of town, in mostly clean glasses. Dead leaves heaped like autumnal snowdrifts against the walls and across the sidewalk. Thea picked her way around them pettishly, and when I opened the door for her she peered like an owl into the fire-warmed, convivial darkness.

"This place is chic," she pronounced with the authority of God on high, and stepped in.

I led her to the booth by the window with the least rips in the upholstery and waited, mild, for her to start talking. She obliged. She had come from Greece, she said, come here with an insatiable thirst for knowledge and took up her sculpture program. But, alas, it didn't fulfill her. Much like everything else in her life, it didn't give her a purpose, a raison d'etre, and she looked so downcast for a moment that I missed entirely what she said next.

"What?"

"My dad's loaded." What a strange word, in her haute collegiate accent. Thea looked up at me from under her lashes like she was waiting for the laughter after a joke.

"Mm." The waitress, bags under her eyes and a cast on her left foot, had limped up, languidly clicking her pen. "In that case I suppose I'll have rum and Coca-Cola."

"Fine." She ordered her drink as well, never looking up, and in the silence that followed I had the distinct sense she was fighting against some vast confession, bubbling against her lips like champagne, and I didn't have to wait long before she lost.

"I want to live like the common people." I leaned back in my seat. bruh moment.

"Is that so?"

"I want to live like common people!" she repeated, and the lamplight glittered across her eyes. "I want to see what common people see. I want to be with common people. Like you." I blinked. Twice. This was a new one.

—

guys... I turned this into my english teacher for a grade. Dying of horror